For George Lucas, Star Wars was always imagined for children

On the eve of his Honorary Palme d’Or, awarded during the closing ceremony of the 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, George Lucas gave a masterclass. The Pathfinder was there and looks back on three things to remember about this exceptional meeting.

George Lucas made his entrance in the Théâtre Debussy in the heart of the Palais des Festivals in a shower of applause, this Friday, May 24. The public present in the room, in fact, offered the legendary director a standing ovation of several minutes, after discovering a retrospective of his films collected by the unforgettable music of Star Wars. It is with great emotion that the moviegoers of the Festival of Cannes welcomed the American filmmaker and producer who, for an hour and a half, indulged in a game of questions and answers with the journalist Didier Allouch.

During this special session, the director returned to his most fundamental work of his career, but also to his film studies, his encounter with Francis Ford Coppolaor even the filming of thx 1138 (1971) andAmerican graffiti (1973). He also gave some fascinating anecdotes about his obsessions, his beginnings as a filmmaker, and his way of working with Hollywood studios. Three things that particularly marked this masterclass and on which The Pathfinder I wanted to go into more detail.

1 A director who fancied himself as a racing driver

Speed ​​has always been one of George Lucas’ obsessions. Whether it’s car racingAmerican graffiti, or those aboard the Millennium Falcon launched through space, the director’s work is shot with movement. It is no coincidence that George Lucas confided that he wanted to become a racing driver when he was young: “When I was in high school, I was obsessed with cars. I did autocrosses in parking lots with my Renault. I was very interested in car racing. I wanted to become a driver.” However, this dream will finally be prevented by a car accident, a week before his high school graduation.

After this event, George Lucas preferred to move away from car racing, favoring speed in fiction. “Later, when I had already begun to understand Star Wars, I’m back in the car race. However, being a single dad with responsibilities slowed me down quickly. I had to raise my daughters and not risk them getting hurt or dying. I stopped running in real life, but not in my movies! »

2 No one believed American graffiti

Before embarking on the saga Star WarsGeorge Lucas directed, in 1973, American graffiti. If today this film is considered a cult film, at the time, the studios did not bet on its success.

“At the time, I made a deal in Cannes for American graffiti. I fought for a year with the studios, they all refused the film, until Universal decided to go, after the phenomenon. EasyRider. We tried to release the film and the scholars organized a remarkable preview. I remember, the public went crazy. It was like a rock concert, with screams and cheers, but the studio producer didn’t think so. He told me that he was not good enough to present, and that I should be ashamed to present such a project. After a long discussion during which Francis Ford Coppola defended me, we chose to remove five minutes from the film, only to learn thatAmerican graffiti The end will be released on television and not in cinemas. »

But George Lucas was not impressed. Faced with resistance from the studios, the director organized a screening in a university hall for all members of Universal: “I contacted the whole studio. We managed to fill the room. There were also people from television. And like the previous time, the audience went crazy. It was madness” George Lucas remembers triumphantly. It must be said that the latter was right, and his stubbornness finally paid off: released in just 50 theaters in the United States, for a small budget, American graffiti finally brought in 25 million during the first weeks of operation. “It’s giant for the time,” notes the filmmaker before concluding: “The film was in theaters for more than a year. It ended up making more than $100 million for the studio.”

3 Independence as a leitmotif

There is no doubt that this kind of experience shaped George Lucas’ way of working with studios. Afterwards American graffitithe director wants to work with the industry in total independence, making it one of the leitmotifs of artistic creation. “I’m stubborn. I don’t want to be told what to do, especially in films, when I have a vision.”

The director also took the writing of the first trilogy as an example. Star Wars comparing in an amazing way to “a saga for children”. “I understand Star Wars at the time when the Vietnam War was going on, but I designed it as a children’s film. We had to offer an escape route, because we saw people returning to the United States in coffins. It was a very dark time. I told myself that I wanted to do something very powerful for children. A film for 12-year-olds who are asking themselves questions and experiencing puberty. There are answers to all this in Star Wars. Young people loved the movie in 1977.”

So when George Lucas works the Prelogue at the end of the 1990s, it is with this same goal, with this independence in place, that he imagines the beginning of his saga. However, upon his release, The Phantom Menace (1999) does not gain general acceptance. Returns of which George Lucas is not ashamed, the director fully assumes his artistic direction and his vision of the space opera: “When the trilogy came out, I was criticized for the fact that they were films for children and that the audience that had grown up with the first Star Wars now he wanted to watch adult movies. of gold, Star Wars it has always been designed for children. It had to stay that way. This is the vision I had and my independence from this idea and also from my other projects has always been one of my biggest prides as a filmmaker. »